When we think ofTim Burtonfilms, we don’t think of them as being overtly scary. He’s usually more comfortable dabbling in the murky phantom zone where maturity and self-validation must arise from external challenges, unique and progressive innocence corrupted by an unempathetic and deeply traditionalist outside world. ButBurton is ultimately a more soft-hearted filmmaker than he’s given credit for,and he usually prefers to play nice when it comes to endangering his characters. That leads to numerous scenarios that could be called creepy, uncomfortable, or just plain strange, due to him not wanting to go for the jugular. But for all his professed love for old horror, that’s a genre he’s rarely truly dived into inhis long and chaotic career. Many of his films have small dollops of horror jolts,but only once has he fully committed to the conventions of horror, which is whySleepy Hollowis by farthe scariest film he’s ever made.
What Is ‘Sleepy Hollow’ About?
Greatly expanding on the original wafer-thin story byWashington Irving, this version has Ichabod Crane (Johnny Depp) as a New York detective who gets mocked by all his peers for trying to use science and logic to solve crimes, rather than just accepting things at face value or accusing everything as witchcraft. As punishment for his efforts and to prove his “groundbreaking” methods effective,he’s sent to nearby Sleepy Hollow to solve a series of murdersthat are all notable for the victims' heads being not just severed, but completely missing. Clearly shaken by his prospects and feeling the unspoken hatred the citizens of the village feel for his outsider presence, Crane is committed to solving the case with hispre-Sherlock Holmes deducting prowess.
While the village elites are all evasion and cold shoulders, led by the wealthy village elder Baltus Van Tassell (Michael Gambon), Crane does eventually find allies in Baltus' daughter, Katrina (Christina Ricci), and the young boy Masbath (Marc Pickering), whose father was killed by the alleged culprit: a Headless Horseman (Christopher Walken). While the film does have a relatively airtight plot that recalls the cozy efficiency ofanAgatha Christiestory,the real appeal of the proceedings is in Burton’s orchestration of the story as one big dalliance with deathin the middle of an area so drenched in fog that it could serve as a theater of the abstract.
‘Sleepy Hollow’ Is a Beautifully-Made Tim Burton Horror Movie
It’s impossible to get into why this film is so effective without going right to the Academy Award-winning production design and the cinematography by the greatEmmanuel Lubezki, which combine to form perhaps the best-looking film that Tim Burton has ever made.Burton’s greatest strengths as a director tend to come out when his films tap intohis animation roots,allowing his settings and character designs to twist and contort to his heart’s malcontent, and no live-action film he’s made truly captures the essence of his core vision likeSleepy Hollow. With every townhouse looking lopsidedly thrown together with wood and mud, the soiled land constantly shrouded in the thickest of fogs, and the thick outer forest area forming a giant black cloud that harbors great evil,every piece of the setting is calibrated through Burton’s gaze long before that started to feel like a hackneyed filter.
Add to that howColleen Atwood’s costume design makes all the adversaries feel 10 feet tall and the brightest lightning you’ve ever seen crashing in to punctuate every major scare moment. It mixes together to be the perfect visual embodiment of spooky vibes, complete with a flaming pumpkin! Burton pulls references from all different kinds of horror films, like the large windmill fromFrankensteinorthe little sisters inThe Shining, but there’s one specific source that Burton pulls from that’s largely responsible for the aesthetic success:Hammer horror films.
Tim Burton Makes ‘Sleepy Hollow’ Into His Own Hammer Horror Film
Tim Burton has often vividly detailed how much love he holds for the Hammer horror films of the 1960s and 1970s, frequently citing them as a primary source of inspiration for his entire filmmaking approach. Knowing that this was his first entry into the world of the horror genre,Burton went out of his way to stuff the film with as many Hammer-inflected touchstones as he possibly could. First off,the story structure is vintage Hammer, with an intelligent yet ambiguously heroic outsider coming into a small village full of scared people who don’t trust our protagonist. Burton modeled Ichabod Crane off of many of the actors most known for starring in Hammer films, likePeter CushingandVincent Price.
Second,Burton has a handful of side characters being played by Hammer icons, which includeChristopher Leeas the judge who sends Ichabod to Sleepy Hollow andMichael Goughas town notary Hardenbrook. This is clearly Burton tipping his hat to his influences and paying it forward to those who contributed to said influences. He even throws in a funmeta moment out ofScreamwhere the first victim is played byMartin Landau, who audiences would have immediately known from his Oscar-winning collaboration with Burton inEd Wood. Most importantly,the general aesthetic direction is essentially an A+ big-budget production-level version of your average Hammer horror film, with the constant thunder-and-lightning, sooty real-feeling village setting, thick fog, and bright red painterly blood that splashes and oozes out of every wound. Hammer horror films weren’t just scary, they could be secretly tongue-in-cheek with their sense of humor. Burton makes sure to include little grace notes like blood squirting across Ichabod’s face or a head rolling between his legs for small humor that alleviates the spooks.
‘Sleepy Hollow’ Is Full of Genuinely Terrifying Scares
And oh, what spooks the film has to offer! Not only is this a film where Burton decided to go for full-on horror, but he alsohas the scares that do occur be some of the cruelest stuff he’s imagined. Every scare is amplified by a barrage of build-up, with animals scurrying away, supernaturally manipulated fog rolling in, and deliciously placed sound design making you hyper-aware of every little moan and creak. This makes it so that when the scares do happen, it’s a cathartic explosion of carnage, and no one is spared. Probably the standout scare sequence is when a family gets totally slaughtered by the Horseman,including an innocent child who has to see his mother’s head roll right in front of him and then get decapitated himself! Ichabod has dreams of his childhood self seeing his mom (Lisa Marie) falling dead out of an iron maiden, with blood pouring out of it. The Headless Horseman jumps out of a twisted tree with severed heads and blood spilling out of its base, which is pretty metal, if not downright scary.
While nobody would claim it’s the scariest film ever made,Sleepy Hollowis easily the most that Tim Burton has ever tried to truly traumatize his audience. Some of his other films may have notorious jump scare moments, likeLarge Marge inPee-Wee’s Big AdventureorPenguin biting a guy’s nose off inBatman Returns, but those were also comedic moments meant for pure shock value, with little thematic staying power.Sleepy Hollowdoes have humor, but it’s so deeply buried under all the bodies and spiritual repression gone rampant in the town that it barely pokes out like a noxious fume.All its scares are only the purest, old-school type, with our smart protagonist being surrounded by dumb people unable to escape death, with hacked limbs spewing blood like it’s coming out of a fire hose. Everything that goes bump in the night could actually be a giant black horse neighing its way to your doom.It’s the kind of stylistically muscled-up retro throwback that Burton has continuously proven himself to be one of the best at, able to flourish most when he’s resurrecting seemingly dead genres with his patented mixture of camp sincerity and unabashed glee for the nasty.
Sleepy Hollow
Sleepy Hollowcan be watched in the US on Prime Video.
WATCH ON AMAZON PRIME
